Spotlight on Veterans: Project 60

Spotlight on Veterans: Project 60

They serve our country, yet many veterans return from service and do not have the support network and employment resources to stabilize. Over 7,400 veterans are homeless in Los Angeles County on any given night.

In honor of Memorial Day, we’re highlighting three critical efforts to end veteran homelessness in our region.

1. We’re partnering with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to host one of the nation’s largest job fairs for veterans on July 10th at Sony Studios. If you’re a veteran or an employer and you want to participate, please sign up today to join us: http://www.regonline.com/HiringHeroesinLA

2. Project 60 launched this year, and aims to house the 60 most vulnerable military veterans on the streets. Project 60 might sound familiar as we highlighted it in our Spring Report as a major progress in targeting resources to house our most vulnerable residents. Here are the 5 big things to know about Project 60:

This project spawns new cooperation among key players: The Department of Veterans Affairs is partnering with federal, County, and City officials as well as nonprofit organizations to house the 60 of the most vulnerable homeless veterans in 2 years.

It plans to house and support the most vulnerable veterans in Hollywood, Santa Monica, Van Nuys and Venice. Each community has identified those veterans most likely to die on the streets.

Four nonprofit organizations, Ocean Park Community Center, St. Joseph Center, Step Up on Second, and San Fernando Valley Mental Health Center will help identify and treat homeless veterans.

It employs the Housing First approach, where permanent housing is the first, critical priority, and individuals are provided the supportive services they need once they’re stabilized in permanent housing.

To read the LA Times’ article on Project 60, click here. Steve Lopez also writes a great piece on it in his column.

3. Our partner, Path Achieve Glendale, has also announced a very ambitious goal: they have committed to ending Veteran homelessness in Glendale by Memorial Day 2012. Check out CNN’s Memorial Day coverage of Path Achieve’s efforts: